NJ Commercial Snapshot

The Whiting Town Center is a sprawling complex on Lacey Road in Manchester whose tenants include restaurants, doctor’s offices and a Super Foodtown that serves as an anchor. There are a few empty stores, but nothing that would signal distress.

Until you talk to one of the tenants.

“The middle class, they’re just dead in the water,” said Cathy Lada, owner of the flooring store, A Lada Flooring. “We’re basically (living) paycheck to paycheck right now. There’s no security.”

With tenants hurting and unemployment rising, banks are bracing for another round of shaky loans, this one to borrowers who own property such as shopping centers and office buildings.
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“Definitely we’re seeing more stress on our commercial real estate loans and our borrowers,” said Bruce Dansbury, chief operating officer of Sun Bancorp, the Vineland-based parent company of Sun National Bank. “It’s there. It’s real. You can see it as you ride around. You see vacancies in shopping centers and office buildings. It seems like everywhere you go there is a “For Lease’ sign.”
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The result: About 4.6 percent of commercial mortgages in the region that includes Monmouth and Ocean counties were at least 30 days past due during the third quarter of 2009, up from 2.1 percent during the fourth quarter of 2008 and mirroring the national rate, according to Foresight Analytics, an Oakland, Calif., research firm.

The deserted office building off Prospect Plains Road in Cranbury looks as if it could still be occupied, with 42 acres of manicured landscaping and traffic signs advising employees where to park.

But it’s been more than two years since Aetna Insurance moved out of the space at 1 Continental Drive, leaving the 500,000-square-foot building empty as the day it was built.

The agency trying to lease the five-story building has dropped the price to $4.95 a square foot, or about $10 less than the 2006 price. The agency tells potential tenants that a square foot of premium office space off exit 8A of the New Jersey Turnpike — where the building is located — is now as affordable as a “golf ball” or “hamburger.”
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At the end of last year, about 34.7 million square feet of office space was on the market in central and northern New Jersey — up from 31.5 million available square feet at the end of 2008, according Grubb & Ellis, a commercial real estate firm.

But that doesn’t include the “shadow market” of space that landlords are simply not bothering to try to lease, said Matt Dolly, managing director of research in the New Jersey office of FirstService Williams.

Dolly said with that space could amount to hundreds of thousands of extra square feet.
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The jobless rate in New Jersey has now hit 10.1 percent, with more than half of those out of work “knowledge-based workers,” or those that would likely work in offices, according to an estimate from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.

And the glut of commercial office space on the market has dropped asking prices to similar lows. The average asking rate for Class A space — the highest quality — has dropped to its lowest level in more than five years — $28.80 a square foot in the northern and central parts of the state, according to Grubb & Ellis.

The row of blacked-out stores at Heather Croft Square gives the impression of a retail ghost town. For more than 20 years, the big draw at the shopping center on Tilton Road in Egg Harbor Township was a Superfresh, until it closed in 2007.

The impending recession gutted the center. A dollar store went bust, a lending company left and a dinette and bar stool supplier shut down. Larry Delany watched helplessly as his neighbors’ stores suffered.
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The alarms were ringing for retail mall and strip center operators a year ago, when major chains such as Circuit City and KB Toys prepared to go out of business after a weak holiday shopping season.

In April, Chicago-based General Growth Properties Inc., which operates four malls in northern New Jersey, filed for one of the largest commercial real estate bankruptcies ever after struggling with a $27.3 billion debt load. Its malls remain open as it works to restructure its debt.
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In September, Taubman Centers Inc., of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., reported a negative cash flow with its luxury shopping mall in Atlantic City, The Pier Shops at Caesars, and said it did not think it could pay off its $135 million mortgage. A company spokeswoman said last week that a plan to turn over the property to lenders is still in negotiations.
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The Shore Mall in Egg Harbor Township was reportedly in jeopardy of closing after its anchor, Boscov’s, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008 and threatened to go out of business. It has since come out of bankruptcy and is adding staff.

The department store’s survival was especially critical after Value City closed that same year. Shore Mall, which opened in 1968, is made up primarily of smaller, independent retailers as opposed to the national chains with greater access to capital.
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Streb said the region remains “overmalled,” and weaker properties that don’t upgrade face difficulties. He ranks malls with a letter grade, and said modern, fresher properties such as the Cherry Hill Mall can be considered an A. He gave the Hamilton Mall in Mays Landing a B, and the Shore Mall a C.

“The A malls are going to survive,” he said. “It’s the B malls that should upgrade, and the C malls, if they don’t do anything, can potentially close.”

99 Responses to NJ Commercial Snapshot

This is the face of the new — and hidden — mid-Hudson homeless: middle-class men and women without a safety net who, when they lose their jobs, often live under the public radar by finding shelter in cars and on couches.

This dad was a computer analyst from the city who just a few years ago was earning enough money — $80,000 per year in salaries and bonuses — to buy a new, three-bedroom $250,000 colonial home on three-quarters of an acre in Orange County, with a finished basement, a backyard swing set and a basketball hoop.
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The new, often hidden homeless are middle-age ex-Wall Street workers like Lenny, who sleep in cars beneath towering mall lights, play poker on laptops and read library books about larger-than-life heroes like Joe DiMaggio. They sneak showers at truck stops and work temporary jobs at malls including Woodbury Common.

The new homeless are mothers like Monticello’s Sherry Sanders, who quits her waitress job that paid as much as $800 a week to move to the mountains from New Jersey with a boyfriend. Then she loses her new $15 per hour house-cleaning job when the resort closes. She ends up sleeping on friends’ couches after the relationship ends. All she has left is the eyeliner she wears to remind her of better days. Pride doesn’t allow her to tell her married kids about her homelessness.

The new homeless are young office worker moms like Middletown’s Tanya Covert, who could not pay the $2,000 per month it costs for her to rent, heat, power and eat in her mobile home. So she too ends up homeless, finding shelter for herself and her little girl in a motel room just outside her daughter’s school district. She waits weeks to tell the school she’s homeless — and eligible for free meals — for fear the girl will have to transfer from the school she loves.

The new homeless include a real estate broker whose income has been slashed from $200,000 to $20,000. They include a nurse and a carpenter, a teacher and a secretary who have been living on the thin ice of the recession economy and have fallen through the cracks when they lose their jobs.

When Jim Nunan Sr. was laid off from his job as a casino host at Bally’s Atlantic City in January 2008, he officially joined New Jersey’s ranks of the unemployed, a small army of job seekers that numbered 226,500 at the time.

Since that day, Nunan has remained jobless, despite countless interviews and failed efforts to start his business.

A victim of the more than 2-year-old recession, Nunan continues to search for work, even as New Jersey’s unemployment numbers have swelled to 425,000, according to the state Department of Labor.
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Traumatized by losing their jobs, many New Jersey residents have tried to re-enter the work force only to suffer setbacks and further trauma.

Researchers say the effects of this recession will have long-lasting financial and psychological effects on frustrated job seekers.

Carl Van Horn is the director of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development and one of the authors of the report. He said this was the first time since the recession hit that anyone has looked at the impact the rising unemployment levels has on families on a national scale. Researchers were expecting to hear grim stories, but the the degree of despair surprised even them.

“A lot of this is not visible to the average person,” Van Horn said of their findings. “This is the Hurricane Katrina of recessions. It is the worst recession this country has seen in 60 years and unemployment continues to rise.”

THE tallest, “Trumpiest” condominium in New Jersey — the 55-story Trump Plaza Jersey City — hit the market two years ago, just as economic forces aligned to hamper its success.

Dean S. Geibel, a managing partner of Metro Homes, then an exceedingly busy builder on the “Gold Coast,” had the Donald from across the river lend his name and label to an ambitious plan for two mammoth residential towers that were to become the tallest in the state. They would swagger on the Jersey skyline, luring luxury-level bargain-hunters from Manhattan and pied-à-terre seekers from all over the world; that was the plan.

But the plan changed. The second tower was put on “indefinite delay” as work on the first was still being completed.

Today the lone Trump building stands about half full, with 239 of its 443 units sold. Only a handful of sales have occurred in the year since the housing market and Wall Street meltdowns. And in August, after Metro Homes defaulted on payment of its construction loans, iStar Financial took over ownership of the building. It has since hired the real estate company Coalco to devise plans for a “relaunch.”

iStar has reportedly suffered widespread losses on real estate investments — another being an Asbury Park beachfront redevelopment project, whose master developer also defaulted on loan payments. The Roseland Property Company is now representing iStar’s interests in Asbury Park, working with officials to scale back and reconfigure redevelopment plans.

just noticing last week how many vacant stoeres/office space there is on Rt46/10 in Morris county. each industrial complex I visit seems to have at least 1 vacancy. it seems the recession is gaining momentum in NNJ

The New Jersey Highlands Council started 2010 with a new chairman, a new member and calls for the new administration in Trenton to finally provide compensation for landowners hurt by the law.

Acting Chairman Jack Schrier, who lives just a couple of miles from Gov. Chris Christie, said in opening the council’s meeting Thursday that he hopes the new administration “pays attention to” provisions in the 2004 Highlands act that require fair compensation to those whose land lost value as a result.”

He added, “I don’t know where that money is going to come from.”
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Several other members, but not all, echoed his words. Tracy Carluccio, an environmentalist, said the act was designed to protect water and called it “the best thing that ever happened to farmers and landowners,” because land in areas with plentiful clean water is valuable. Michael Holtaway of Somerset County, attending his second meeting, said land is like any other investment, not guaranteed to pay a return.
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“Land is like any other investment if it suffers the vagaries of the marketplace, but when it suffers due to government action, that’s a whole other story,” David Shope, who owns land in Long Valley and Mansfield, said.

“I lost $5 million in property value,” Deb Post, a Chester Township farm owner, said. “I assure you, that was not the best thing that ever happened to me.”

A report by Governor Christie’s transition team calls the Highlands Council “a disaster on multiple levels” — and recommends either drastically reducing the water-protection agency’s powers over local zoning, or eliminating it altogether.

The report says the Highlands Council has added “extra layers of government bureaucracy” that have “punished landowners” in the 893,000-acre region, which supplies water to more than 5 million New Jersey residents. Those “extra layers” of environmental regulation threaten to strangle future economic development and are unnecessary because the state Department of Environmental Protection already oversees water quality, the report says.

“If the Highlands Council had its powers changed or reduced, or even eliminated outright, environmental protections would still be in place, enforced just as they are in every other part of the state,” the report says. “All projects would be subject to DEP and local rules and regulations, just as they would be in any other region.”

The policy blueprint for the Christie administration reads as follows: A state government that does less, but does it better.

A raft of transition reports released today provides a glimpse into Gov. Chris Christie’s options as he inherits a state he calls “broke,” with suggestions ranging from consolidating or eliminating some agencies to freezing salaries for public employees and teachers.

Prisoners could be double-bunked in their jail cells. School construction projects could be halted mid-stream. Some state-run facilities for children and the disabled could be shuttered. Subsidies could dry up for horse racing and New Jersey Network. And 27 people working for state authorities could lose their salaries, which are higher than the governor’s.

The reports’ language is by turns scathing and sympathetic to the outgoing Corzine administration, but consistently describes a state that is technologically backward and either understaffed or poorly staffed. They mirror major themes of Christie’s campaign, especially the need to change New Jersey’s reputation as hostile to business growth — though environmentalists read it as a retreat from critical protections.

Senator Sean Kean, R-Monmouth, said he was glad to see that Senators Raymond Lesniak and Kip Bateman are moving forward boldly with hearings on Senate Bill 1, which seeks to abolish the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) and create a fair plan to meet affordable housing goals. Kean noted the move comes after New Jersey’s unemployment rose to 10.1 percent in December – higher than the national average and the highest level in 33 years.
“So-called ‘affordable’ housing rules are blocking development at a time when New Jersey desperately needs the jobs these projects should create,” Senator Kean said. “These rules also will force towns to raise property taxes to pay for housing that may not be needed at a time when New Jersey property taxes are already the highest in the nation.”
Senator Kean said he will work with his colleagues on a bipartisan basis to get the best bill possible, including provisions that would let towns include affordable housing built before the state established law and rules on affordable housing in the 1980s.
“Towns that were proactive and built affordable housing for residents before it was required by law are punished by these unfair rules,” Senator Kean said. “Any complete reform effort must allow towns to take such housing into account when determining new requirements for housing construction.”

The reports call for, among other things, cutbacks, shifting responsibilities, hirings and firings, closing state facilities. They also recommend ways to encourage economic growth, including tax cuts for businesses and providing tax credits to encourage investments.

It calls for better coordination of all housing programs and finds that key divisions such as Local Government Services, Fire Safety, Codes & Standards and the Urban Enterprise Zone Authority are understaffed.

The report calls for ethics training for all non-profit agencies that receive DCA aid, the department play a greater role in encouraging shared local government services, something Christie supports, as a way to help cut property taxes, and for major technology improvements.

The panel calls for a 90-day freeze on all actions by the state Council on Affordable Housing, and finds there is no constitutional obligation for such a state agency to exist.

“Consider change in COAH’s leadership,‘’ the report states. “The subcommittee did not receive specific complaints about specific individuals within COAH, but COAH has veered off course from the intent and purpose originally given to it by the legislature.”

Christie has said he wants to eliminate affordable housing requirements known as the Council on Affordable Housing, or COAH.

The report said the state should shift the burden of creating affordable housing to the municipalities by changing the Fair Housing Act of 1985, the law that created COAH. Longer term, the governor could also push for a constitutional amendment that would negate the state Supreme Court ruling based on a clause in the state constitution. Immediately, it could reduce the regulations and recalculate the amount of affordable housing a municipality is responsible for.

“So-called ‘affordable’ housing rules are blocking development at a time when New Jersey desperately needs the jobs these projects should create,” Senator Kean said.”

Although I agree that COAH was a crime against the state, I fail to see how any pent up development demand is going to save us. I seem to recall COAH being the reason so much development happened. Everyday, Sean Kean proves to me that he is the second dumbest rock in the legislature (after doherty).

Kean is a moron. The real problem with COAH is its insistence on an obligatory, court-enforced housing “equality” that isn’t mandated in the state constitution.

COAH is also completely impractical, since its main impetus is to force lower-income residents into rural and suburban areas that do not offer adequate jobs or public transportation. So, we now have the concept of COAH in direct competition with the development of transit-centered housing models.

17 – I know all about COAH, spent most of the 90s in a town in NJ that still does not have a single development. They lost their coah fight but cuz of the economy, the land is still a field. irony is that its the one COAH mandated development that would very much make sense (wedged between two populated areas and with an enormous sewage treatment plant not too far away.

19- It was depressing to read but it’s about time that these people stop being invisible to the rest of us. I found out last week that some NJ apartments are vacant, but not for lack of tenants willing and able to pay the rent. Apparently, if their credit score does not meet the standards set by the management company that’s it- the apartment remains empty. Nobody wins-sad.

Evidence relating to the death of Government weapons inspector David Kelly is to be kept secret for 70 years, it has been reported.

A highly unusual ruling by Lord Hutton, who chaired the inquiry into Dr Kelly’s death, means medical records including the post-mortem report will remain classified until after all those with a direct interest in the case are dead, the Mail on Sunday reported.

And a 30-year secrecy order has been placed on written records provided to Lord Hutton’s inquiry which were not produced in evidence.

Especially if you are straight, married and have no kids or even if you just have a problem with written evidence that the catholick church and mormons violate the alleged separation of church and state.

As a straight, married, Catholic, conservative, with kids, I say the only true conservative position is to support allowing gays to marry. The true threat to marriage (Just ask the Nordic nations) is couples living together and forming families without marriage. There is no way that two guys or two women getting married has any impact on my marriage.

And for those who assert that marriage is about rearing children; popycock. We allow sterile people to marry and we allow 80 year olds to marry. Marriage may ofeten produce children but it is not the reason for it.

Traumatized by losing their jobs, many New Jersey residents have tried to re-enter the work force only to suffer setbacks and further trauma.

Researchers say the effects of this recession will have long-lasting financial and psychological effects on frustrated job seekers.

I’m curious to know, how many people that didn’t buy a home got priced out forever? I ask this because realtors were telling me that that would be the case as far back as 2004. I assume no one will now be able to buy a home in prestigous Northern Jersey because I estimate that a piece of sh1t cape in Garfield has to be going for $750,000 by now. Thank goodness it’s different here and that we’re insulated and we live so close to NYC.

As a straight, married, Catholic, conservative, with kids, I say the only true conservative position is to support allowing gays to marry. The true threat to marriage (Just ask the Nordic nations) is couples living together and forming families without marriage. There is no way that two guys or two women getting married has any impact on my marriage.

And for those who assert that marriage is about rearing children; popyc0ck. We allow sterile people to marry and we allow 80 year olds to marry. Marriage may ofeten produce children but it is not the reason for it.

“A lot of this is not visible to the average person,” Van Horn said of their findings. “This is the Hurricane Katrina of recessions. It is the worst recession this country has seen in 60 years and unemployment continues to rise.”

What is most amazing to me is that the bankers and fat cats have the middle class at each other’s throats instead of organizing against the wealthy.

Office workers want to see public servants laid off! The guy making $12/hour at Home Depot with no benefits thinks teachers make too much money! Fireman are the problem! It is all nuts.

These are all middle class people struggling to stay solvent. Meanwhile the bankers run around looting the store! All the while everyone worries about some city worker making 30K/ year and abusing his sick time.

They have successfully turned the middle class against each other. Meanwhile the wealthy continue finding new tax loopholes and ways to loot the treasury. It sad.

Hearing that California house buying is picking up. Analyst that deals with that market stated that the uptick wasn’t from real home-buyers but from speculators. He was VERY clear on this, it wasn’t investors (looking to own them, rent them out etc.) but SPECULATORS.

Yesterday, I attended an Eagle Scout Court of Honor and, laugh if you will, but I found it very inspiring. The boy’s mother pinned on his Eagle rank and his father put the Eagle neckerchief around his neck as all the other Eagle Scouts in the room (there were ten of them) stood behind him to symbolize the line of Eagle Scouts that goes back generations. It gave me great hope for this next generation and made me feel like our country is going to be okay after all. Changing my name to Pollyanna……

34.Shore Guy says:
January 24, 2010 at 11:58 am
As a straight, married, Catholic, conservative, with kids, I say the only true conservative position is to support allowing gays to marry.

Interesting, as a Heterosexual, Married, Catholic, Conservative, Veteran, with kids, I believe the only true conservative position is the reverse. Guess Liberalism & Conservatism have different flavors on this issue, same with abortion maybe.

The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage
Why same-sex marriage is an American value.

“Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership. We encourage couples to marry because the commitments they make to one another provide benefits not only to themselves but also to their families and communities. Marriage requires thinking beyond one’s own needs. It transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society. The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this, rather than lament it.

…This bedrock American principle of equality is central to the political and legal convictions of Republicans, Democrats, liberals, and conservatives alike. The dream that became America began with the revolutionary concept expressed in the Declaration of Independence in words that are among the most noble and elegant ever written: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”"

I have always wondered how someone can logically deny basic civil “rights” to someone based on their private bedroom preferences, yet find it abhorrent to deny the same thing based on physical chaacteristics such as skin color…..

let me channel “al gore” for a moment. After ww1 when the German currency collapsed, the state issued a new currency largely backed by the states real estate holdings which were a significant % of the total market at the time.

The FED/ USG hold 70-80% of existing mirages if I am not mstaken. The USD is toast. Hmmmm what do we back the USD 2.0 with? We all know for Knox is empty and so is the manhatten depository.

Don’t forget that the USG holds a significant portion of US farm land as well through mortgages and USDA loans

Kelly Kulick defeats Chris Barnes to become the first woman to win a Pro Bowlers Association title. And it was a major tournament, the PBA Tournament Of Champions. Go Jersey Girl! 265 – 195 final score. She’s from Union Twp.

House Whine says:
January 24, 2010 at 10:06 am
19- It was depressing to read but it’s about time that these people stop being invisible to the rest of us. I found out last week that some NJ apartments are vacant, but not for lack of tenants willing and able to pay the rent. Apparently, if their credit score does not meet the standards set by the management company that’s it- the apartment remains empty. Nobody wins-sad.

The problem is, the credit score is very likely to characterize their willingness and ability to pay the rent – based on some prior experiences.

It amazes me that some of those that claim that there is no intrinsic right for healthcare, at the same time have guts to support the affordable housing boondoggle in any shape or form (other than for the elderly or disabled). The only thing that has to be done is a proper code enforcement to prevent the overcrowding.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York paid French banks 100 cents on the dollar to settle trades with American International Group Inc. in November 2008, the same month an AIG competitor negotiated payments of less than a third of that to retire similar bets.

kettle[58] One could argue the NY Fed could have extracted the haircuts from the domestic CDS owners (Goldman, etc.), but realistically, the government entity can’t stiff the foreign parties without a major hit on their credibility (like ability to sell bonds).

Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership.

Change this to: Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between a man and a woman who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership, while preserving our species, and I’m in agreement.

gay couples have been observed in most mamallian species and in avian species as well. Gay coupling has no impact on the ability of a species to breed and or evolve.

Before the 1900′s marriage was a private matter most often between a religious organization and the individual couple. The state did not become regularly involved until the last 100 years, a relative blip in the history of human coupling.

While no says you must agree with or approve of a gay couples choices. Trying to deny them social rights or status based on private behavior is no different then say blacks should vote and only couture as 1/3 of a person.

I will be the first one to support you or anyone else who decides to voice an opinion such ” I don’t think purple people should be allowed to marry”. But you cross into a different realm when you wish to actually limit another humans rights based on differences in opinions of physical appearance.

Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between a man and a woman who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership, while preserving our species, and I’m in agreement.

a gay couple is just as capable of all of your stated goals. gay couples do not impact the ability of a species to propagate. all current evidence points to it being a highly recessive trait but one that continues throughout multiple species and therefore most likely has some net positive impact. If it had a negative impact on any species, that species would eventually evolve the trait out of the species over 10′s-100,000′s of years.

How is discrimination based om bedroom preference any different then any other sort of discrimination from ethnic to s3x discrimination (M v F)

The gay marriage issue gets heated in this nation because, unlike in other parts of the world, we have conflated civil and religious marriage. In other places, one goes to a civil authority who performs a civil marriage and then, if one is so inclined, one has a religious mariage performed. Largely because of our frontier beginnings and lack of civil structure, we have allowed religious officiald to perform a joint civil/religious ceremony, which the state recognizes.

your probles is that you believe that people who think differently from you are bigots/racists.

Personally, I don’t see why the state should endorse private romantic/sexual relationships. Civil marriage is not marriage: it is a policy instrument to reward socially useful behavior. Stable sexual liaisons are socially useful inasmuch they (potentially) produce/raise children. Take away that potentiality and you go into the real of private relationships, which should not be the object of public policy.

From the two topics of the evening Cooper Mini AWD is more interesting. Normally, the shorter the base of the car (the distance between the rear and front axles) the less is the stability advantage you gain from AWD (certainly, traction advantage in snow, mud, etc. will be there)

68 – Carlo, 30 states and the federal govt basically sh!t all over a group of human beings, and the powerful cry victim– G-d forbid a wedding photographer has to take pictures at a gay wedding but its okay for someone to die alone in a hospital without the mate that G-d made them fall in love with. Nice. and the solution is to establish second class citizenship?

the gay marriage thing isn’t what gets me. That’s coming nationwide one way or another. The way the churches colluded in writing to pass Prop 8 is what we really need to watch. Just wait until they run out of obvious targets to rally the unthining masses with. In 50 years, we might all be dribbling into our magic underwear wondering what ever happened to infertile people. or catholics.

Here’s the other side. Take away any tax benefits to marriage for anybody.

Take away any health coverage premium differential for couples or families. All premiums must be calculated using single/age/gender factors.

How is current social policy promoting stable communities? Divorce rate is one indicator, fail. Another is infant mortality, fail. Another is incarceration, fail. Alcoholism, fail. And on and on and on.

Consider that the current social policy has been an abysmal failure, and remove any monetary benefits promoting marriage.

Eventually, marriage will revert to a religious-based relationship, and social policy can focus on appropriate outcomes.

Carlo, I’m just saying that it was pretty easy for the republicans (and apparently) the churches to rouse a majority of America with inflamatory rhetoric to go out of their way to change their constitutions. So what’s to stop them, or any powerful group, from coming after you? Constitution protects you until it doesn’t. And don’t tell me I’m accusing people of being bigots. Believe anything you want. But when your beliefs manifest themselves into pain for others and you can’t recognize that maybe they don’t need to be codified law, well then, if the foo sh!ts. All hail our corporate overlords. I’m going to bed.

Pat, health coverage is “Employee + 1″ – no matter a spouse or a child. It is cheaper than 2 single coverages for actuarial reasons.
Please find any data showing that people who had a church wedding (vs. a civil one) have lower infant mortality, incarceration or alcoholism rate. O.K., you win on divorce – at least for the religious groups frowning on it.

January 25, 2010
Huge Housing Complex in N.Y. Returned to Creditors
By CHARLES V. BAGLI
The owners of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, the iconic middle-class housing complexes overlooking the East River in Manhattan, have decided to turn over the properties to creditors, officials said Monday morning.

The decision by Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock Realty comes four years after the $5.4 billion purchase of the complexes’ 110 buildings and 11,227 apartments in what was the most expensive real estate deal of its kind in American history.

The surrender of the properties, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, ends a tortured real estate saga that saw the partnership make expensive improvements to the complex and then try to rent the apartments at higher market rates in a real estate boom. But a real estate downturn and the city’s strong rent protections hindered those efforts, leaving the buyers scrambling to make payments on loans due for the properties, which have been a comfortable harbor for the city’s middle class since they opened in the late 1940s.

“We have spent the last few weeks negotiating in good faith to restructure the debt and ownership of Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village,” said the statement by the partnership. “Over the last few days, however, it has become clear to us through this process that the only viable alternative to bankruptcy would be to transfer control and operation of the property, in an orderly manner, to the lenders and their representatives.”

Metropolitan Life built the complexes for World War II veterans in the 1940s, when the city was in desperate need of new housing. It received tax breaks and other incentives in return for maintaining low rents. The buildings became home for generations of workers searching for an affordable spot in Manhattan.

But with the real estate market soaring in 2005, MetLife decided to sell. Tishman Speyer and BlackRock won an auction the following year.

This month, the partnership headed by Tishman Speyer defaulted on $3 billion in debt on the properties, and in the last few days secondary lenders have been calling to replace the partnership.

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